statt + genitive case

J with the grammar skillz: "Ich baue jetzt statt eines Hauses ein Loch in den Berg hinein."

And then in a following sentence he says "Statt Lichtern baue ich Fackeln ...", Which is a switch to the more colloquial dative, but it makes sense because with the genitive there would be no lexical case marker (statt Lichter) and obviously his little mind senses it needs to be marked!

Subjunctives 2

I have always consciously and liberally deployed the various subjuctives and J uses them frequently and accurately. 

Today he said the following: "[Die Lehrerin] dachte, ich hätte den Laptop nicht geschlossen, aber ich hatte ihn geschlossen." 

Prepositional phrases

Since I've been back I've been noticing that J's prepositional phrases are much improved, especially in the dative case. Whereas before he would often still say that we are "in das Haus" or "in den Wagen" or "in die Schule," now he is getting them right most of the time. 

I have not yet heard or noticed examples that show me he is distinguishing cases in two-way preposition usage. I've explained this to him a few times, but mostly I just try to model it.  

Update: during J's photostory he has Ulli approaching Gustav and bowing before him: 

I used this as an opportunity to work on two-way preposition usage. Since I find J often learns best when I'm not teaching him directly, but someone else (I talk about this in my puppetry article), I addressed my instruction to Gustav:

Ulli tritt vor dich und verneigt sich vor dir. 

Gustav asked why this was the case, and I gave a grammar explanation. 

We'll see if J repeats this at next telling!

darüber

For the first time I heard J spontaneously produce a correct darüber sentence:

"Ich möchte darüber reden, was wir Gustav bei Minecraft zeigen können."

But then a couple minutes later, this:

"Die Oma und ich haben geredet über wie ..." 

Still, progress! That is an advanced construction. 

Relative clauses

This morning during our library chat, J was killing the relative clauses. While describing the various tests he accomplished in a videogame this morning, these kinds of sentences were veritably streaming out of him: 

Ich habe alles geholt, was ich holen musste.
Ich glaube, das war der erste Test, den ich geschafft habe. 

I was especially excited about that masculine accusative singular relative pronoun, especially in combination with subordinating word order. There were 3-4 examples of this. I don't believe I heard a single error in basic grammar and syntax. 

By the way, the videogame was "School of Dragons," based on the movie How to Train Your Dragon.

In his description this morning, J was also using a lot of terminology from this book we have just acquired and been reading. 

So today was a very good example of how books + videogames can be used to leverage a lot of active L2 production. I've just ordered a large German World of Warcraft book in order to better be able to do this with that game.  

begegnen

This morning J, while describing a World of Warcraft incident, told me about "... ein Monster, das ... dem ich begegnet habe." 

He got the auxiliary wrong (as he still not infrequently does with all the verbs with sein), but I was very impressed that he self-corrected the object case. 

Pluperfect and idioms

One thing I noticed about J's narration skills is that he is very solid on the use of the pluperfect: 

• Als die Freunde ein Versteck für die Nacht gefunden hatten, legten sie sich aufs Ohr.

• Nachdem die Freunde aufgewacht waren, flogen sie weiter.

• ... bis sie eine von den kleinen Sandsteinhäusern sahen, die Rätsel und Mätzel gebaut hatten.

Also, he picked up the idiom "sich aufs Ohr legen" somewhere along the way, since it's not one that I tend to use. He has used it twice in the story so far. 

Overgeneralization

Lately I've heard J overgeneralizing the umlauting of plural forms: Der Knoten, die Knöten, and das Monster, die Mönster.  

Mönster

I love it!

Grammar milestones: dative case

In the last couple of weeks, the dative case has been really coming together for J. Until recently he would formulate indirect objects in the accusative: 

Zeigen wir das die Mama!
Kannst du das die Mama schicken?

Now he's getting it correct most of the time:

Zeigen wir das der Mama!
Kannst du das der Mama schicken?

Also, a few days ago he said that something was made aus weichem Käse. This is the first time I've heard him get that kind of adjective ending correct. 

Grammar 1: passive voice

J has an impressive command of the passive voice. Today as we were discussing Watership Down I asked him to remind me who Captain Holly was. "Das ist der graue Hase, der ins Gesicht gekratzt worden ist,"* he rattled off with no hesitation. 

November 2014

I have consciously stressed the passive since the very beginning. During the early game-routines I talk about in my article, I would make an effort to reformulate as many active-voice sentences in the passive as possible and just say one right after the other (or often Friedel would do one and I the other). So for example during the tent-building-and-stuffed-animal-fetching game, we would say things like this:

Alex: Wen sollen wir jetzt holen?.
Friedel: Ja, wer soll jetzt geholt werden?

and

Alex: So. Wir haben die Katzen geholt.
Friedel: Ja, die Katzen sind geholt worden! (later + von uns)

As in the latter example, the passive reformulation was frequently artificial and cumbersome, but I didn't worry about that. I just wanted J to absorb that the exact same thing was being said in two different ways. I would do this kind of doubling in daily conversation too.

The single biggest systematic dose of hard-core passive practice J got in the early days was with this book by Arthur Geisert:

This story, which is told entirely in pictures with no text (there are several Geisert books like this), is about how the house ends up falling off the cliff and being destroyed as the result of a chain reaction initiated by a glass of milk being spilled in the kitchen. Here are the first few pages:

I made a detailed German script of the whole chain reaction, first in the active, then in the passive voice. I would read both versions to J, sometimes on different occasions, sometimes one right after the other. We have probably read both versions a couple dozen times each. (You can find the script here, feel free to copy and use; if anyone can correct or improve the German idiomatically, please do so in the comments; playgroup colleagues, I'll put the book in our lending library so you can request it). 

Another technique I still use for practicing the passive is as part of a "taskmaster daddy" schtick I do at home. I put on a mock-stern demeanor and say things like:

"Sind die Zähne schon geputzt worden? Mir kommt es vor, dass sie noch nicht geputzt worden sind. Zähne! Seid Ihr von Jamie schon geputzt worden?" [Silly-squeaky tooth voice] "Nein, wir sind noch nicht geputzt worden! Bitte bitte bitte können wir jetzt geputzt werden?"

I do the same thing in lots of situation, especially with clothes at dressing time and with food at mealtimes. Pointing J's bowl of peas for example:

"Sind die Erbsen schon aufgegessen worden? Hmmm, was sehen wir da? Wir sehen, dass die Erbsen nicht nur noch nicht aufgegessen worden sind, sie sind kaum berührt worden! Erbsen, was meint ihr: Wollt ihr gegessen werden, oder wollt ihr blöd sitzen gelassen werden?" [Silly-squeaky pea voice] "Wir wollen natürlich gegessen werden!"

Etc., the possibilities are endless. 

There's a subtle psychological dimension to the above context. By phrasing the actions in the passive, it actually takes the pressure off J as an agent who has to perform and changes the situation to one that objectively needs to happen. That somehow often enables things to go more smoothly. There is a whole range of other situations where it is useful to take pressure off the subject (literally and figuratively) in this way, not only in "bad" ones where a child accidentally breaks something:

Hoppla, ein Glas ist kaputt gemacht worden! 

But sometimes also in "good" situations. My son, for example, does not always like to be praised for things he does well. Often he likes it better when the praise is put in the passive, like this:

Das Stück ist sehr gut gespielt worden.

*He has a kind of fascination with Captain Holly, which he once explained this way: "Ich mag Hauptmann Holly so gern, weil er den anderen Kaninchen berichtet, was in der Heimat passiert ist, damit die das wissen."

Media today 13

Reading: Brandon Justiz, Monster und mythische Kreaturen: Altes Griechenland. 

This is a great little read (and cheap!), designed for tablet, with delightful quirky pictures and nice short physical descriptions of the monsters. Excellent practice of the dative and genitive case, including with weak nouns, for example Der Greif hat den Körper eines Löwen und Flügel und Gesicht eines Adlers.

When J noticed one evening that some of the snakes have different expressions, I asked him how he thought each of them was feeling about being in Medusa's head helping turn folks to stone. We proceeded to ask them, one by one, and they gave various answers, most infamous of course, but a few conscience-stricken. Now we go through this each time and J does most of the voices. So it's not such a short read anymore!


Listening: Otfried Preußler, Der kleine Wassermann (1:02-1:06); Brothers Grimm, "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten." See my other post on this today.

Viewing: Die furchtlosen Vier (c. 0:00-60:00)

Age 4.12.19